This is How You Start a War: Libya's Frantic Fight for the Future

Four scenes—and a series of photos—from the front lines of the revolution in Libya.

1.The activist

@AJEnglish COVER THE SITUATION UNFOLDING IN LIBYA! MAKE THE WORLD AWARE OF OUR SITUATION #Feb17 #Gaddafi

Ahmed Sanalla sent his first tweet at 12:38 a.m. on Saturday, February 13, from Benghazi. He'd never tweeted before, but he figured out the language. @AJEnglish would alert Al Jazeera's newsroom; #Feb17 was the hashtag for protests scheduled for the seventeenth. At the time he wrote it, two days before the protests that would engulf the city and shortly after ignite a civil war, the med student was studying for his end-of-semester forensics exam.

Like most Libyans, Sanalla spent the previous weeks watching Al Jazeera's coverage of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. At the beginning of February, while Egyptians converged on Tahrir Square, he logged onto Facebook and found a page calling on Libyans to take to the streets on February 17 for their own Day of Rage, demanding basic freedoms and human rights. It did not explicitly call for Qaddafi's removal.

Sanalla was convinced that one of the reasons Hosni Mubarak hadn't fired on protesters in Egypt was the presence of the entire foreign press corps. But journalists had long been shut out of Libya, allowed to enter only on stage-managed junkets. So he called his brother Anas in Manchester, England, to talk about creating a Twitter account with the purpose of courting media. They decided that Anas would set it up from the UK—that way it wouldn't have a Libyan IP.

Before this, Twitter seemed like bullshit to Sanalla, a place to post that you were listening to Gaga or were the mayor of Quiznos, but now he had a reason to use it. The handle Sanalla wanted, EndTyranny, was taken, so he settled on EndTyranny01. (He's since upgraded to EndTyranny101.)

At school the next day, Sanalla told some friends that they should all go out on the seventeenth. Most told him to be quiet, keep his voice down. This wasn't Egypt or Tunisia—it was Libya. In Libya, suspicious activity is observed and reported to a Revolutionary Committee; Qaddafi loyalists are promoted for the zeal with which they report on their neighbors. "They know where you live, the plates on your car, your SIM registration," Sanalla says. "It's easy to pick you out and find you." Being a member of the Revolutionary Committee means preferential treatment in exams, training, and postings. In exchange, you are expected to vigilantly quash dissent.

Sanalla knew of a few students who had been summoned to a meeting with high-ranking Revolutionary Committee members and warned against re-creating Tahrir Square in downtown Benghazi. And so on February 14, he wrote his second tweet: Pro decomracy [sic] activists in #Libya have been threatened with the full force of the regime if they march on #Feb17.. we need coverage..

Sanalla grew up in northern England, where his parents had immigrated. He'd never planned on living in Libya, but during his first year of school he partied a little too hard and, rather than repeating a year, decided to start over in his parents' homeland. In addition to having a British accent, usually several decibels above everyone else, and dressing like he just walked out of HM on Oord Street, what really sets him apart in Benghazi is his hair. Wad for a ruffled effect, it looks like he just got caught in a glamour-shot gale, even during a war.

At 10:30 p.m. on February 15, Sanalla was watching soccer when he got a phone call from his friend Osama. The planned Day of Rage was still two days away, but a group had already gathered at the Hawari police station to protest the arrest of Fathi Terbil, a lawyer representing victims of the 1996 Abu Salim massacre, where 1,200 prisoners were killed. After all of Sanalla's swagger, Osama wanted to know, would he really be going out?

Sanalla wasn't stupid. He took precautions: a baseball hat, a black hoodie, a kaffiyeh wrapped around his face so that only his eyes were exposed. "I didn't know what the fuck to expect," he remembers. He caught up to the protesters on foot walking down Fatah Street. There were only fifteen of them, clustered together chanting in the darkness. Sanalla followed but kept a distance of several hundred yards, stopping at storefronts intermittently to at least give an impression that he wasn't technically involved. He estimates about 200 others were doing the same.

The core group led the way through Jamal Street before stopping in the middle of Omar Mukhtar Square, a central roundabout in Benghazi. One young man held a cardboard sign with FREEDOM scrawled in black marker in Arabic. He tied it to a lamppost with string.

Sanalla's heart sank. A hand-drawn cardboard sign? "This is the only fucking banner we have? What are these meager people that don't know how to protest?" he thought. The group continued chanting "Freedom" in a loose circle. On the side streets passersby slowed down to watch, too scared to join but too curious to stay away.

Meanwhile, Anas had been calling Sanalla every ten minutes to find out what was going on. After they hung up, at 12:47 a.m. on February 16, Anas used Sanalla's account to transmit what his older brother was seeing:_ Protests in Benghazi ongoing! This needs to get coverage, start spreading the word. #Libya #Feb17_

Suddenly, from a distance, the group in Omar Mukhtar Square spotted a flash of green laser pointers. The green beams bounced over buildings and protesters' faces. Then they heard the shouts of Qaddafi supporters approaching. A few people ran, but most sprang to action, overturning garbage cans to barricade the roads and grabbing pipes and stones to arm themselves.

Over the ruckus of preparations, someone gestured to Sanalla to look up: A teenage boy had climbed a signpost and was tearing down a billboard of Qaddafi's face. The growing crowd shrieked with giddy amazement. In that small act of adolescent vandalism, the whole thing suddenly became real.

On the phone 2,000 miles away, Anas could hear the fervent shouting in the background before Sanalla quickly hung up._ #Libya Pro-supporters have clashed with the anti-government protesters in Benghazi. #Feb17,_ Anas tweeted at 12:58 A.M.

Then Anas went to the Web sites of all the major news organizations he could think of—CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and Britain's Sky News—and typed his brother's phone number into the generic contact-form page. He wrote that Sanalla was on the street in Benghazi and available to talk.

@AJEnglish @BBCBreaking Protests in Benghazi are picking up, Gaddafi posters being torn and roads are being blocked. The world needs to see, he tweeted a half hour later. Sanalla didn't actually know what Anas was writing; he was busy throwing stones.

When Sanalla's phone rang again, he picked up to a voice he didn't recognize. It was a journalist from BBC World Service asking if he would speak on-air. Sanalla agreed to talk using a pseudonym. Now he was narrating what he was seeing to listeners around the world.

Hot water cannons and tear gas being fired at protesters by the security forces, to disperse the crowds in Benghazi. #Feb17 #Libya, Anas tweeted at 1:34 a.m.

At 2:30 a.m., EndTyranny01's account flashed again: security forces manage to gain the upper hand..crowds have been dispersed..only small gatherings now...chants continue.it's a start. #libya. The protesters cleared and Sanalla ran home, immediately turning on his computer and sending his own tweet before going to sleep: It's 4AM here in #Libya and things are just starting.....#feb 17

The next morning, when he powered up his laptop, the site wouldn't load. The government had shut down Twitter.

Over the next five days, protesters continued to amass in downtown Benghazi. Live rounds replaced water cannons and tear gas. On the eighteenth, a peaceful funeral procession turned deadly as security services fired into the crowd. In response, protesters gathered outside the Katiba, the city's hated military barracks, and attempted to storm the base. For two days, the city became an urban war zone as groups of men lobbed homemade bombs at the barracks while troops with machine guns opened fire at anyone who tried to advance. More than 200 people would be killed during the fighting.

Sanalla spoke again to BBC, CNN, and Sky News, since the media were still absent. On February 20 at 6:46 p.m., Anas tweeted:_ CONFIRMED: #Benghazi in the hands of the people, revolution almost complete. All citizens with a group of special forces moving on barracks._

That night, a defected brigade of the special forces struck a deal with the Katiba's military commanders to end the fighting. By 9 p.m., the first Libyan city was liberated. Protesters poured into the barracks and looted stockpiled weapons.

@andersoncooper when will you be coming to libya? Sanalla tweeted on February 23.

Then he sat back and waited for the journalists to descend.

···

2. The Rebel

To get to Ras Lanouf from Benghazi, you go southwest on a highway known to most as the desert road. The three-hour drive passes through bleached yellow sand and brush, fanning out toward the horizon in all directions. I'm on my way to the front in an orange Kia with two would-be freedom fighters.

After the liberation of eastern Libya, Qaddafi's forces attacked from the west, attempting to regain control of the land where most of the country's oil refineries sit. Rebels rushed to defend their holdings, successfully pushing back the troops. Now, in early March, they're battling for a town called Bin Jawad on the desert road. International military intervention is still ten days away, and so Qaddafi loyalists are winning. They have superior weapons, and more important, they know how to use them.

The guys in my car don't really have a strategy as to what they're going to do when we get to Ras Lanouf. In fact, their plan as it stands now is to show up, find extra guns, and then head into battle. Or they'll volunteer to hand out food.

Of the two rebels, Abdallah Al Huni, 24, seems the most eager to get to the front. "I think I'd die the first day, because I'm not going to hide—I'm going to run at the bullets," he says beside me in the backseat. It's my second week in Libya, and I'm no longer surprised by this kind of pronouncement. Since Benghazi fell, everyone seems to speak with a kind of insane bravado that's either the result of their youth or the heady possibility of overthrowing a dictator who has oppressed his citizens for forty-two years.

Al Huni is wearing a black leather jacket and black jeans, and he's wrapped a white kaffiyeh around his neck. He looks like a 1980s movie villain who's about to hijack a plane, except he gives himself away whenever he breaks into a grin—which happens at the end of pretty much every sentence.

Al Huni's family is part of Benghazi's upper middle class. He has a degree in accounting and speaks fluent English. Compared with the rest of the region, Libyans don't actually have it too bad; they make far more money than their North African neighbors. The rebels' chief demand is freedom from Qaddafi's despotic rule, and although they frequently speak of economic disparity, it's because they argue, on account of their oil holdings, that Benghazi should look more like Dubai, not that they don't have enough to eat.

Al Huni's parents took it in stride when he told them he was going to the front; his older brother, Loui, has been there for the past four days. Al Huni gave him a call this morning to let him know he was coming. "You don't have a gun," his brother said. "Why are you doing that?"

"When I get there, I'll just talk to you," Al Huni replied.

He tries to sound nonchalant, but he's defensive about not having a weapon. "I mean, I tried to get one," he says, "I tried to buy one, but they're too expensive." Prices of AKs, or "Klashs," as the rebels call them, have spiked from under a thousand dollars at the start of the uprising to two or three grand now.

When we finally reach the last rebel checkpoint at the gates of Ras Lanouf, two guards tell us that this is the farthest they're letting people without weapons go today. Rebels with AKs form a circle beside the checkpoint and start unloading into the air. Al Huni, without a gun, runs off to join the shooting party. When he returns, he pulls out empty casings from his pocket for me to see. "I'm keeping these," he says, as though he's picked up some pretty seashells.

As far as we can tell, no one's handing out weapons to eager volunteers. We grab a couple of orange-juice bos at the food-distribution point and squat on the curb, messing with bullet casings and killing time. But then Al Huni spots a friend from the neighborhood carrying an AK.

Hassan El Habab looks legit. The 18-year-old is decked out in a green jacket and beret, and his breast pockets are loaded with ammo cases the size of small mint bos. The difference is obvious—it looks like he's off to war, not to a smoky poolroom full of Russian spies and hookers. Al Huni steals an admiring glance. El Habab has been at the front line for four days; the last two nights, he slept in a shipping container. And unlike the others at the checkpoint, he isn't wasting his ammo. "I shot three just to try it," he says unsmilingly.

A week ago, El Habab went to a military training camp on the outskirts of Benghazi, but the base didn't have spare weapons for new recruits, so he traded his car for an AK and hitchhiked to the front. When he told his parents he was going, they said, "Be careful, pray, and stay warm." The guys laugh at this last request and talk about running into family and friends at the checkpoints. In one capacity or another it seems like everyone they know is here.

While we're talking, El Habab gets called back to the truck going to Bin Jawad. Al Huni asks if he can come along. They walk a few paces away and speak heatedly.

"I asked if I could go with him, just to help, but he said there was no room," Al Huni tells me when he walks back. There isn't; the guys are wedged into the white pickup bed, their legs dangling off the side. We watch as the car rolls down the desert road. "Damn, I want a gun," Al Huni says, shaking his head.

As we're wandering around the checkpoint trying to figure out if there's anything to be done, there are suddenly flashes of artillery fire on the road El Habab's truck just went down. The front line has come to us—either the rebels lost ground or Qaddafi's troops have redirected their tanks. The streaks of fire and smoke are way too close, and everyone at the checkpoint starts shouting and scrambling.

We run back to our car and peel off a mile to put distance between the shelling and us. The air bombardment has started. It's just a soft sound in the distance, but the vibration travels, making the car windows dance. We get out to look west, back the way we came. The Sidra oil refinery near Bin Jawad is on fire—maybe the city, too; we just can't tell.

Al Huni leans against the car, muttering prayers. He's sure civilians are dying. "Each bomb is killing five or ten people," he says. I suggest that, statistically, it's unlikely. "But imagine it is," he responds. He doesn't want to be calmed. El Habab is back there; so is his brother.

The sun is setting when the bombing stops, and Al Huni decides to go back to Benghazi. "I've got no weapons—what am I going to do?" he says as he gets into the car that will take him away from air strikes and sleeping in shipping containers, back to his bed in his parents' house.

···

3. The Prisoner

The field trip to visit prisoners of war is organized by the media committee, a subset of the National Transitional Council (NTC), the uprising's new government (though they refuse to officially use that word). Since mid-March, they have organized a slew of junkets, including busing journalists to the rebel-held oil refineries and the front line.

The trip takes on a Qaddafiesque air from the start. After a lengthy organizational delay, we are finally lined up to board the forty-seat bus when we're told that our translators will not be allowed to join us. They won't disclose the location of the detainees, how many places we will visit, or exactly who will be there.

There's an eerie ripple of déjà vu about the whole thing. I spent most of my last visit to Libya less than a year ago on a Qaddafi-approved press trip, also stuck on a bus with incensed foreign journalists. We were forbidden from exiting the vehicle during our ten-hour visit to Benghazi except once, for a press conference praising two new Chinese-built housing developments. Afterward, we were told that there was not enough time to get off the bus in the city. My first trip to Benghazi was only memorable because of how much sleep I got while riding around construction sites.

Now, as the uprising enters its sixth week, the liberation army is mired in battle just one city down the desert road, struggling to push Qaddafi's troops back west as French and American planes patrol the skies. The conflict has reached a stalemate.

After a short drive, we park in front of a squat single-story concrete building at the back of a former military base. The NTC has made good use of Qaddafi's old prisons, detaining captured soldiers in the same rooms Qaddafi once kept those who challenged his rule. The silent whitewashed hallways are lined with metal doors ominously missing their doorknobs. We are led into a back room that once served as a kitchen, where prisoners of war are brought before us one at a time. The official taking questions spends more time yelling at the prisoners than translating their answers.

Our minders from the NTC sense that the press corps is getting impatient with the way things are unfolding. A producer from a British television channel tells her cameraman that she doesn't feel comfortable running the footage; a man from an Italian paper storms out in protest. The session is quickly wrapped up, and we are herded out.

When we get back on the bus, there's another reminder of my last visit: The go-to autocratic solution for the frustrated journalist appears to be food. The revolutionaries pass out Twinkies, and chewing replaces discussion of prisoner abuses.

At the next stop, a military-police station, we're led into a courtyard the size of a small squash court. Two dozen prisoners are arranged before us in rows: black men who the revolutionaries say are mercenaries.

Slouching in a white plastic lawn chair apart from the rest, Brigadier Mohammed El Adin Hanesh almost blends in with our escort of rebel soldiers. A light-skinned Libyan in camo, he goes unnoticed by the pack, which is focused on the possible African mercenaries, most of whom insist they are migrant workers. His face is badly scratched, and there's a string of gauze trailing from beneath his shirt.

The story of how he came to serve in the Qaddafi military operation against the revolution seems simple enough. A month into the uprising, he got a phone call from a high-ranking commander telling him to report for duty. "I didn't want to, but there's an Arabic saying, 'We have no ploy in our hands,' " he explains to me, palms opened to the sky. "If you have orders from Qaddafi, then..." He trails off.

Hanesh, 56, works in a civilian ministry tasked with mine removal. He lives in Tripoli with his wife and three of his four children, and has been in the military since he was 18. It paid for university and afforded him employment for life.

After getting the phone call, he told his wife he'd be leaving for a few days. He sent one of his sons out to buy cigarettes. When the boy returned with five cartons, his wife immediately knew. "Your father said it would be three days—these cigarettes are not for three days," she said. Hanesh chuckles, suddenly animated by the memory's retelling; he hasn't been in contact with his family since his imprisonment. He admits he's worried something will happen to them because, as he puts it, he surrendered.

"It never came to my mind that Libyans would kill each other," Hanesh tells me. He says he refused to pick up a weapon against the protesters in Tripoli who tried to replicate Benghazi's uprising before being brutally repressed.

When he refused to participate, Hanesh says, "I thought I would be killed or imprisoned, but I was ordered to go to Sirte," Qaddafi's hometown. He tells me that he's never seen the rumored mercenaries with his own eyes. The regular army on the front lines are people like himself, too frightened to disobey orders, too drained to ecute them properly.

He narrates his story in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice, as though he's already come to terms with what has happened and what might transpire. Crouching on the ground by his feet reminds me of listening to a grandparent's stories of wars fought decades ago—not events two or three days before, a hundred kilometers down the road.

After arriving in Sirte, Hanesh says he sat on a base for four days where he did nothing; no one seemed to care or even notice that he was there. Then orders came to drive to Ras Lanouf, where he was put in charge of a team of military engineers tasked with deactivating land mines possibly placed by the rebel forces. Instead, they sat around some more.

Hanesh says he spent a lot of time alone, staring at the desert. His underlings brought him tea, but no one spoke. Then they were ordered to join the advance moving on Benghazi. If there was an explosion at the front, his men were supposed to rush forward and start removing the mines. But, Hanesh tells me, they were never given equipment to either remove mines or to plant them.

As the convoy reached the outskirts of the city, Hanesh says he saw an opportunity to escape. He was driving alone in the back of the attacking party, and so he swerved off the road and parked on an abandoned farm. He carefully placed his AK and pistol under a tree and waited for the rebel forces. When he spotted a small cluster of men, he walked toward them with his hands in the air. Then, he says, they beat him and brought him to this detention center.

"I told them, 'Do you have high-ranking people here? Just call them and say Brigadier Mohammed El Adin is here. They will tell you I have nothing to do with this,'" he remembers. He figured a military man would know his record of neutrality in the Qaddafi machine. Libya is a small country; someone was bound to know his clan name and recognize him.

As we're talking, a rebel military officer suddenly appears from another part of the courtyard, interrupting him.

"We caught you when you were cowering in a tree. Why are you denying that? We know you are a bomb technician. We are sure. We confirmed that already," the officer, who gives his name as Abu Bakr, shouts at Hanesh. "You are an engineer technician specializing in mines."

Hanesh shakes his head.

"You were in a car, then you climbed a tree."

"I swear I was not," Hanesh responds. "I didn't do any bad things. I was saying no to carrying a weapon and killing people in Tripoli."

"Then why did you accept to kill people in Benghazi?"

"I was sent to Benghazi as punishment because I refused to kill the people in Tripoli.... I just left my gun under a tree and surrendered myself. If you don't want to believe me, that's up to you."

A few more journalists have wandered over and ask Hanesh about Qaddafi's forces. He says he knows nothing. Another of our rebel escorts approaches and starts taking photographs of Hanesh on his cell phone. Abu Bakr continues questioning him. It's unclear why it's happening in front of us and not in some back room where they could really get into it.

"You are a brigadier—how could you not know about your own forces?" Abu Bakr asks.

"I swear, I swear I had no idea. They just told us to go to the eastern cities until the Egyptian border. There was a revolt—we had to go."

"Did you put mines around Sirte or not?" Abu Bakr shouts.

"No, we just wanted to deactivate any mines found in our way." Hanesh might as well be reading from a script; he's obviously answered all of these questions before.

"You know there are officers and soldiers who didn't take orders, and they were killed. Why didn't you do the same?" Abu Bakr asks, as though it's impossible that Hanesh should prefer to be a grandfather than a martyr.

"I did refuse to carry a weapon and kill innocent people, so that's why they put me on the front line. I was expecting worse—to be ecuted or sent to prison." "How do you accept to kill your brothers in Libya? Did you get a high bonus? Why did you accept this?" Abu Bakr hovers over him, yelling, as journalists scribble notes.

"You know we are an army," Hanesh says, finally turning his green eyes on the interrogator. "These were my military orders. You cannot refuse the orders from the military. This is what happened. We have just to say okay."

Suddenly, as though Abu Bakr has gotten the confession he was after, or because he's satisfied at having ruffled Hanesh in front of a salivating crowd, Abu Bakr backs off and offers the man a cigarette, which Hanesh accepts, joking that he'll die one way or another. They laugh together like friends, and Abu Bakr places his hand on Hanesh's shoulder.

"Did you know I was living on the road you were coming from?" he asks Hanesh, as though he might have invited the man for lunch that day if Hanesh hadn't been with troops ready to kill Abu Bakr's family.

Before we head back to the bus, Abu Bakr pulls me aside and says that Hanesh is a liar. He says his friend caught the brigadier cowering in a tree as Qaddafi's forces started losing ground on the outskirts of Benghazi. "Everybody says they were forced to fight. I believe he didn't want to fight...maybe 50 percent. But he was definitely captured. None of Qaddafi's troops actually surrender."

A week after the visit, Human Rights Watch confirms that the loyalists have laid mines on the eastern outskirts of the road to Ajdabiya,the next city down from Benghazi. Rebels claim to have also seen them at the entrance to Sirte. When I ask the media committee for permission to return to the prison to see Hanesh so I can ask him about the mines, I'm told there is a new procedure for visiting prisoners. I recall my last visit to Libya, where I spent almost two weeks requesting a meeting, with a foundation started by Qaddafi's son Saif al-Islam to track human-rights progress in Libya,that was never granted. I'm told now permission might be hard to come by and the paperwork prospect might be cumbersome—maybe tomorrow.

···

4. The Son

Ahmed Hnesh can name every family in Pittsburgh's Libyan community. When he was growing up, most of them congregated at weekly Saturday dinners at the Salems' house. These were crammed, hours-long affairs. The women sweated over macaroona mabaka and couscous in the kitchen, the men played Libyan card games in the living room. The 29-year-old remembers summertime lamb roasts, chess, and impassioned political conversation with dissident fathers who traipsed the world trying to end the Qaddafi regime.

Hnesh's father, Abdel Hamid, has known many of the older men at Saturday dinner for decades. In the 1970s, Qaddafi sponsored scholarships for hundreds of Libyans to study in the United States. Abdel Hamid was among them; he came to Pittsburgh from Tripoli to complete a master's in science in 1975. At the time, he was apolitical, but after three years of observing Qaddafi from abroad, he became an active dissenter. The regime noted the students' activities and cut their funding. It became too dangerous to return home. Others smuggled themselves out of Libya after being imprisoned for protesting Qaddafi and were granted asylum in the United States. They married Libyan women and resolved to teach their children Arabic and the Koran.

Then, in 1981, working from Khartoum, Sudan, they formally established the largest organized opposition to date—with the backing and material support of the U.S. government. Under the banner of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), they ran offices and paramilitary training camps all over northern Africa and the Middle East, lobbying governments for funding and agitating for diplomatic boycotts of Qaddafi.

In 1984, a small group crossed into Libya from Tunisia to assassinate Qaddafi. Stories of the party's capture are conflicting. Some say they were spotted at the border by Libyan security forces; others say they were sold out by one of their own in Tripoli. The plot was botched and the ringleader ecuted.

Over the next decade there would be at least three more failed attempts on Qaddafi's life. Then, in the early '90s, the United States decided to withdraw its support. After more than ten years working to overthrow Qaddafi, the NFSL had nothing to show for it.

Like all children of exiles, Hnesh, who now lives in D.C., grew up hearing about the horrors of the regime. When the uprising began in the middle of February, he spent the first few days obsessively refreshing Al Jazeera at work and going to weekly protests in front of the White House. "My birth till now—pretty much my entire life—has revolved around this particular opportunity, and now it's here. How could I possibly miss it?" Hnesh remembers thinking.

But his family was unconvinced. Hnesh's father cautioned against going to Libya. Abdel Hamid trained in an NFSL military camp in the '80s; when the men had to return their AKs, he wept. He asked his son if he couldn't be more helpful at home, building support from America, but Hnesh felt certain he could do more from inside.

On the afternoon of February 21, Hnesh received a text from his childhood friend Ahmad Elarabi:_ In all seriousness do you want to go to Libya? _Ten minutes later Hnesh responded: I'm trying to go now. Hnesh, who works as a management consultant, requested a vacation and, without telling his parents, booked a flight with Elarabi to Cairo leaving the next day. He called his family when he landed. They were so stunned they could only be supportive. On February 24, Hnesh and Elarabi crossed into Free Libya.

Hnesh stayed in Libya for two weeks, helping to plan a mass protest and composing lists of needed medical supplies for aid organizations in the States. In late February and early March, Benghazi felt like a twenty-four-hour-a-day revolutionary party. It seemed only a matter of time before the entire city would collectively march on Tripoli. But then Hnesh's vacation days ran out, and Qaddafi was still at his compound in Bab al Azizia, rambling about Al Qaeda in the east and calling the revolutionaries rats. Just three days after returning home to D.C., Hnesh decided to take a leave of absence and go back to Libya.

When I meet Hnesh at an Italian restaurant in Cairo the night before his return, he's so distracted by the prospect of going back he can hardly decide what he wants to eat. Despite the fact that Qaddafi loyalists are advancing on Benghazi, Hnesh feels confident, convinced that it's only a matter of time. He's not exactly sure what he's going to do when he gets there, but he's not too worried. "The situation is way too fluid to come up with any plan," he says.

Another Libyan-American friend has come with him this time, Abdulrahman Salem—whose family hosts the Saturday dinners. I ask if they're at all concerned about not having a plan, "We consider ourselves to be pretty good problem solvers in general," Hnesh says. "So we're going to go over there and make it happen—'get in where we fit in.' " For all their Libyan roots, Hnesh and his friends think and speak like the Americans they are.

The next night, right after the U.N. passes a no-fly zone, Hnesh and Salem gun it to the border. They drive into Benghazi as the radio announces that Qaddafi's forces are en route to the city. They spend the night of the invasion lying on their stomachs on top of a friend's house gate, guarding the street below. Salem has an AK; Hnesh is armed with a billy club and what he calls his superb night vision. When I make it back to Benghazi two days later, Qaddafi's forces have been driven out, thanks to French and American air strikes—but there's the persistent worry of a fifth column inside the city, so the guys continue their nightly patrol.

They've just made it through the most harrowing forty-eight hours of the war thus far, but Hnesh is already concerned about productivity. His non-plan isn't working out so well. In fact, for the time being, he feels useless. "Even more useless than I would have been on the outside," he says. "At least, on the outside, I could call people and talk about how useless I was."

A couple of days later, I find Hnesh and Salem reclining on a pair of orange pleather couches in the lobby of the Uzo Hotel. The Uzo has become the hub of the National Transitional Council's international press outreach. They're here waiting to snag a meeting with one of the media-committee members in an attempt to help coordinate communications across the broad swath of authorities. There's the NTC, the crisis-management team, and the media committee; miscommunication between the three has turned press conferences into lectures about Qaddafi abuses and fanciful tales of the rebels' military might.

I join them and ask what they've been up to. "Nothing," Hnesh admits, unable to disguise frustration. Sprawled across the couches, they're trying to decide whether they're in the mood for candy. There's only chocolate at the hotel's meagerly stocked gift shop. In fact, Hnesh hasn't seen a single candy shop since he's been in Benghazi. He'll open one in the new Libya, he says. He also wants to open a juice shop on the beach that rents out surfboards, and a specialty-tea emporium.

The boredom has actually become physically depressing. Hnesh dozes off. That night the guy they've been waiting to meet with doesn't show.

When I see him again a week later, Hnesh tells me he's thinking about going home. "Things are happening outside that I can contribute to," he says, echoing the advice his father gave him back when the crisis began. "Things like dispelling those notions of Qaeda running around. I even heard Hezbollah is here, which is absurd," he says, laughing.

We're sitting on a stone bench on the pedestrian promenade that makes up Benghazi's seafront. In a different country, it would be crowded with tourists, but today it's empty. The beach is littered with garbage. A few days earlier, he finally got that meeting with the media committee member. Hnesh offered to redesign the official NTC Web site. He wants to make it sleeker, more readable and interactive. (At the moment, the site looks more like a blog than an official source of information.) He's presenting his design in an hour.

"It's frustrating," he says. "In America, if I had all these meetings with all these senior people, I would have a full-out operation running on the ground, and like, shit would happen." He says you have to come in here with a plan. I mention how different he sounds from when we met in Cairo, the contrast between his non-plan then and his desire for pre-planning now. He knows it but insists that these meetings aren't all for naught, because he's making contacts. "Libyan business doesn't work like American business. It's more the connections. I mean, we've made a lot of pretty good connections," he says.

I run into Hnesh at the rebel media center shortly after he presents his design. He flashes me a thumbs-up: The Web site was accepted. "See, you thought I wasn't doing anything," he says, before bounding down the stairs. "Maybe I won't leave anymore," he calls back over his shoulder.

After staying on another week, Hnesh finally returns to the States in the middle of April. When I catch up with him over the phone, he sounds optimistic. He's preparing for a Libyan-American conference over the weekend in Washington. The exiled community is trying to lobby Western governments to continue supporting the rebellion. He says he's glad to be home.

As of the end of April, the new Web site still isn't up.

Sarah A. Topol is a writer living in Cairo. This is her first story for GQ_._